Steven Johnson’s latest book Where Good Ideas Come From landed in my lap at exactly the right time. I was designing a 2-day innovation session for Razorfish, along with the magnificent Bumper Carroll, and Johnson’s thoughts on innovation hit me like a bolt out of the blue (although, if you read the book, you’ll learn that ideas aren’t really lightning bolts from nowhere). In the first few chapters, Johnson describes the variables that are in place in the natural world that make it not only possible but likely for change and innovation to occur. To my delight but not surprise, they happened to be the exact same ingredients that Dave Gray, James Macanufo and I cooked up for Gamestorming. What are some of those variables? Well, ladies and gentleman, you need a network in which information can move fluidly, you need an environment that encourages ideas to swarm (cross-displinary is best) and you need the proverbial white space – you need an adjacent field for possibilities. There are other essential ingredients for group innovation to take off – such as an environment of risk-taking and a level of comfort with failure – but at the end of the day, innovation can be removed from its black box of WTF. Together, people, WE can create intentional environments in which innovation is the outcome. We don’t have to wait for a wild-haired genius. We are the wild-haired geniuses we’ve been waiting for. So, as I say so often, GAME ON.